Freddie Kraft sounded off on one issue with the joint weekend between NASCAR and IndyCar at Phoenix this past weekend. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast, the spotter for Bubba Wallace shared the one thing that he didn’t like about the joint effort with the two racing organizations.
“You’re not even allowed to go in their garage, or they’re not allowed to come in our garage,” Freddie Kraft said. It was like Fort Knox. Don’t dare go in either.
“I don’t think it was NASCAR side, really, but I don’t know. …I would think we should be inviting them into our garage, we should be allowed to go in there. That’s the whole point of having these combo weekends. I couldn’t even walk out on pit road. I got a hard card when they were racing, you were not allowed to walk on pit road with a NASCAR hard card. …If you got a credential from that series, it makes sense to me that you should be able to go intermingle with each other.”
IndyCar and NASCAR took over Phoenix Raceway
In September, it was announced that IndyCar would join NASCAR’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and Cup Series for a crossover weekend at Phoenix in March. IndyCar competed at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday with the NASCAR O’Reilly Series, while the Cup Series competed on Sunday.
“I loved when we had the doubleheader with them at Indy, just kind of being right there and going over and hanging out and watching practice in their box and stuff like that,” Ryan Blaney said at the time, per NASCAR.com. “It was cool, and I think it’s going to be fantastic. And I like that IndyCar’s going back to Phoenix. It’s been a while since they’ve run in Phoenix, and I think it’ll put on a really good show.”
In the IndyCar race on Saturday, Josef Newgarden won and reached the top of the IndyCar standings. In the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, Justin Allgaier came out on top to claim his third win at Phoenix Raceway. And in the Cup Series race, Ryan Blaney came in first to snap Tyler Reddick‘s three-race win streak.